Keith's 4 December update: According to a friend who has spoken with Ben Samouha, he has been retaliated against. Two NASA MSFC people became aware he was being interviewed for a new job and called the new employer. Speaking for NASA, they said not to hire him, that he's trouble, incompetent, makes waves. More to follow.

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Keith's 6 December update: Sources report that the two individuals who spoke with a potential employer of Ben Samouha were NASA employees George Mitchell and Andy Gamble. They were reportedly bragging about how they had done this until they read NASAWatch - and then they shut up.

To my surprise, now the mission directive has changed, so Mars is certainly decades away. So as I had thought about nearly two years ago, I mentioned on here, about the idea of going to the Moon again with a few terms of a government.

So the space council and Trump have chosen this road.

Even if there is a return to the Moon, I still think it won't be anything beyond the first few missions. As for Mars, definately not Aldrin's vision, I think Aldrin was disappointed. I haven't seen the press video, but I read the news article via yahoo news, and the image showed him, he looked unhappy.

To my surprise, now the mission directive has changed, so Mars is certainly decades away. So as I had thought about nearly two years ago, I mentioned on here, about the idea of going to the Moon again with a few terms of a government.

So the space council and Trump have chosen this road.

Even if there is a return to the Moon, I still think it won't be anything beyond the first few missions. As for Mars, definately not Aldrin's vision, I think Aldrin was disappointed. I haven't seen the press video, but I read the news article via yahoo news, and the image showed him, he looked unhappy.

Any thoughts?

I have not seen anything concrete. Like funding. Without funding for the program, any directive by Trump is futile.

And with funding, we could then start talking about if it makes sense to go to the moon that way. Nobody needs a Apollo program reloaded. If there should be any progress, it should be about testing the technologies needed for getting to Mars (not landing or working there, different environment) in lunar orbit.

But I fear, it will be done cheaper. At most, land once or twice there and celebrate the USA. With that dark outlook, I can understand why Aldrin might feel strongly disappointed. The real next step is Mars, Moon is just finishing the work we started 50 years ago.

The next step is Space! ISS is too dependent on Earth, too Earth centered.

The challenges are not only technical. On Apollo, Mission Control acted as baby sitter.

We need to move from that into larger, more autonomous crews and missions.
Specially having an automated part of the mission (ex: robotic habitat setup years ahead of crew arrival).
The Moon (orbit + surface) is the right place to work on that
And it will be different from Apollo 2.0

Quite true on what has been stated, of course a moon mission be beneficial to use some new gear, but as was done in the past, and with private space flight emerging, yet to be verified on its own. The congress will have to set aside funding, so the plan of what was done before with Obama has been reversed, so a lander will have to be planned in the years ahead.

As for Aldrin, he'd be deluding himself to want an outpost on the Moon, Armstrong and Moore are dead, after nearly fifty years when they spoke on the BBC, and Armstrong thought that an outpost would be in their lifetime.

Any sort of outpost on any body in the solar system is going to be expensive, if it isn't decades in the making, it can't work. The interest will fade.

Any sort of outpost on any body in the solar system is going to be expensive, if it isn't decades in the making, it can't work. The interest will fade.

Sadly yes. It can't win against short term interests and "solving the problems on Earth is more important"... usually this means: "Making sure billionaires can buy another megayacht to show the millionaires how poor they are."

That is also why I think a high pace in achieving goals is necessary. If you stretch the milestones too far into the future, you will barely manage to achieve the first one before something else will become more interesting again. If you want to be serious about having a outpost on the moon and see it prosper, you would need to put serious money into the project, get there as fast as possible (which has the nice side effect that the money is spend more effective) and then keep going fast. In such fast-paced time, you don't get far if you are not having a hyped tweet every week, and for getting this hype running, you would need to aim big.

That is why Mars is really the better goal and moon only interesting as testing/training ground for Mars mission...

Well, maybe also for something else: While it is more effective to launch mass to Mars directly from Earth, it might be interesting to place a large reusable Mars Transfer Vehicle "In the roads" in lunar L1 higher up the gravity well, should it be possible to produce enough material needed on the moon. Many assumptions there, but a lunar industry sounds not too stupid right now.